Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine (reading an ebook TXT) 📕

her face and forced a smile. "I've decided to go back to the hypnotist again. No more hysteria, no more involvement. Just to find out, objectively, what happened. "

Ceecliff pursed her lips. "That is madness, Jo. How can you possibly be objective? How could anyone?"

"Because Dr. Bennet can tell me to be. That is the beauty of hypnosis, one does what one is told. He can use my own mind to hold everything at arm's length. "

Ceecliff raised an exasperated eyebrow. "I think you're being naive, Jo. Extraordinarily naive. " She sighed. Then after heaving herself out of her chair, she turned toward the house. "But I know better than to argue with you. Wait there. I'm going to fetch Reggie's papers for you. "

She returned with an attache case. Inside was a mass of papers and notebooks.

"I think you should have all those, Jo. The Clifford papers. Not much compared with some families' archives, but better than nothing. Most of it is about the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. You can look at that another time. Here. This is what I wanted to show you. " She unfolded an old letter, the wax that had sealed it still attached to the back, the spidery scrawls of the address faded to brown.

Reverently Jo took it and screwed up her eyes to read the unfamiliar copperplate hand. It was dated 12 June 1812. Jo read aloud. "'My dear Godfon and Nephew'—he's using long s's!—'I was interested in your remarks about Clifford Castle, near Whitney-on-Wye, as I too visited the place some years back. I have been unable to trace a family connection with those Cliffords—Rosa Mundi, you will remember, was poisoned by the indomitable Eleanor, wife to King Henry II, and I should dearly have wished to find some link to so tragic and romantic a lady. There is a legend, however, which ties us with the land of Wales, so close to Clifford. I have been unable to substantiate it in any way, but the story has persisted for many generations that we are descended from Gruffydd, a prince of south Wales—though when and how, I know not. Let it suffice that perhaps somewhere in our veins there runs a strain of royal blood—'" Jo put down the letter, laughing. "Oh, no! That's beautiful!"

Ceecliff grimaced. "Don't go getting any ideas above your station, my girl. Come on, put it all away. You can look at it later. Let's eat now, before the food is spoiled. "

While her grandmother rested, Jo drove to Clare. She parked near the huge, beautiful church with its buttresses and battle-mented parapets and stood gazing at it, watching the clouds streaming behind the tall double rank of arched windows. Had Richard de Clare stood looking at the same church? She could picture him now, the last time she had seen him, in the solar at Abergavenny, his hazel eyes full of pain and love and courage, the deep-green mantle wrapped around him against the cold, clasped on the shoulder by a large round enameled brooch.

She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans and stared at it morosely, then, hitching her bag higher on her shoulder, she let herself in through the gate and began to walk toward the south porch.

Richard de Clare had never stood in this church. One look around the fluted pillars and high windows told her it had been built long after Richard's time. Disappointed, she began to walk up the broad aisle looking around her. There were several other people wandering around with guidebooks, talking in muted tones. Ignoring them, she made her way slowly up the chancel steps and stood staring at the altar, thinking of the last time she had stood before a shrine—was it at Brecknock?—with Gerald saying mass. She remembered the mingling of the incense and the candles, their acrid smoke blown by the cold wind off the mountains that filtered through every corner of the castle. She remembered looking up at a carved, painted statue of the Holy Virgin and praying for her unborn baby, praying with a faith suddenly so intense, so absolute, that it had filled her at the time with a calm certainty that her prayers would be heard. I wonder how long Matilda kept that faith, she thought grimly, her eyes on the cross that stood on the altar. Did she still have it when she died? She had not told Pete Leveson that she already knew the end of the story, nor Ceecliff.

She was conscious suddenly of someone watching her as she gazed at the cross and, embarrassed, she turned away. In this so Puritan, so Spartan, church, the memories of her Catholic past seemed almost indecent, and to the agnostic, twentieth-century Jo, the urge to go down on her knees and then cross herself as she turned away from the sanctuary was like a primeval hangover of some strange superstition.

Hastily she retraced her steps and let herself out into the churchyard. She drove slowly through Clare, savoring the beautiful medieval buildings of the Suffolk town, and turned to follow the signs toward the country park and the castle.

After parking once more, she stood and stared around her. Where the huge castle of the Clares had once stood were now the hollow remains of a ruined railway station. The Great Eastern Railway had come, destroyed most of what remained of the castle, and in its turn had gone, leaving only the empty shell of the station, trimmed and manicured, with mown grass between the platforms where the track had been. Only a few fragments of wall remained of the castle that had stood for nine hundred years. But the motte was still there— the high, tree-covered mound on which the original keep had stood—and determinedly Jo climbed it, following the spiraling path to its summit. From there she could see the whole of Clare spread out in a shimmering panorama before her. The air was soft. It smelled of